SOLITUDE
by January
Summary: Story inspired by the song Solitude by Evanescence. Hope you enjoy it. I have made a couple of changes so a sequel can be made if it is well enough received.


_**This story was inspired by the song Solitude performed by Evanescence. Characters belong to Stephanie Meyer song and lyrics belong to Evanescence.**_

_**Solitude By: January McIntosh 11/17/2010**_

My name is Isabella Marie Swan. I am 18 years old and have been in love with my best friend, Edward Anthony Cullen, since our sophomore year. He has never been interested in me in a romantic way much to my disappointment. The girls that he has been with have always been tall, blond, and very beautiful. Me I am just plain, average and just not that interesting I guess. Don't get me wrong I have been asked out over the past couple of years and been out on a few dates, but it was never anything that I was really interested in because it wasn't with Edward.

He and I share the same interests. We both love to read and often discuss for hours on end the books we have read. We are both also very into music. He plays the piano so flawlessly that I get lost in it when he plays, and I play the guitar. That was how we met. It was our sophomore year in High School and we were paired up to do a duet in music class. Instead of performing the piece that our teacher had provided for us we decided to write one of our own. We earned an A in that class for our efforts.

Since then we were always together writing and performing music. Sophomore and junior year we won the talent show performing together. Mostly I think that it was because of him. Everyone likes Edward. He is very outgoing and popular and has this confidence about him that you can't help but be drawn in. People flock around him like bears are drawn to honey. I am personality wise the complete opposite of Edward. I am very shy and tend to keep to myself a lot. So unless I am hanging out with Edward playing music or hanging out with his sister Alice who takes me shopping too often for my taste, then I am alone either reading or playing my guitar.

I think that I get my personality from my dad Charlie Swan. He has been alone since my mom left us when I was three. It has just been him and I coping with the choice my mother made so long ago. He told me that she said that she couldn't stand being tied down to a family when she was so young. She was 18 when she had me, so at 21 when she left she said she needed to live life whatever that means. Growing up with that knowledge was hard. A mother is supposed to love their child with everything in them. She has sent letters with pictures of her now perfect life over the years. When I turned ten I got a birthday card from her with pictures of her, her new husband and their new daughter along with a letter telling me how happy she is. I was completely devastated, and since then I have not wanted any contact with her. How could someone do that to their first born? I guess that I was just not a good enough daughter for her. Now if I get a card or letter from her it goes straight into the trash before it even gets opened.

What made me fall in love with Edward weren't his dashing good looks or the fact that he was a musician. It was the fact that he was the only person besides my father who really got me. He understood me in ways that no one else ever has. We could sit and talk for hours effortlessly about anything and everything. What made it even better was through our discussions we found out that we held the same interests.

In our junior year he became very popular with all the girls at our school. During the summer he had a growth-spurt, and developed a very muscular body. That coupled with his good looks and talent sent him into high status. Even though I was always around him at school I just didn't seem to get noticed that much. He had mentioned to me on more than one occasion that he thought it was strange that I didn't have a boyfriend. I guess he didn't hear what the others thought of me. I remember hearing that I was his groupie wannabee. While that was true in a since it didn't make it sting any less hearing how the population of our high school viewed me.

In the middle of our senior year I started leaving little notes and poems in Edward's locker. They were never signed but I wanted to tell him how I felt. I thought that being his best friend he would confide in me about someone leaving notes and poems in his locker but he never did.

Two weeks before we were supposed to sign up for the Senior year talent show my father informed me that he had been dating someone for the last six months and that they were getting married the week after graduation. I was very hurt because he had waited so long to tell me that he had met someone. He was supposed to be the one man that I could depend on to be honest with me no matter what. But he kept something from me for so long, something that was very important and could change both our lives. I couldn't understand why he would do that to me especially after everything that happened with my mom. I mean come on it had been just him and myself relying on one another for so long, how could he not tell me sooner? I felt betrayed by the man I put all my trust in.

That was the first and only time that Edward had ever seen me cry. He held me that night until I was all cried out and I loved him all the more because of it. He suggested that we not sign up for the talent show but I insisted that we still do it. The day of the sign ups Edward told me that he wanted to perform in the talent show with someone else this year. The girl he was dating at the time Lauren Mallory had an amazing voice and he wanted to enter the talent show with her. He had told me time and again how much he loved her during the school year. That in itself hurt me every time he said it. I just didn't think that it would come in between our friendship. The day he told me he wanted to do the show with her I died inside. This was the one thing that I was looking forward to. It was the only thing that was keeping me together and sane at the time. I looked at him through tear filled eyes nodded my head and walked away without a word. He called after me but I kept walking. I exited to doors of the school, went to my truck, drove home, and collapsed on by bed sobbing uncontrollably.

Since that day I hadn't spoken to Edward or his sister Alice. They dropped by and called all the time but I refused to speak to either one of them. Edward broke me in a way that I would never recover from. I had thought that if nothing else we were at least a team, but I was wrong. No one knew that I entered the talent show alone because I asked the teacher to keep it quiet; I told him that I wanted it to be a surprise and he agreed. I worked on the song that I was going to perform diligently until I thought it was perfect.

The night of the talent show I hung around out of sight watching all the performances losing interest after a while. When it was Edward and Lauren's turn I watched with renewed interest. They were wonderful performing together. Edward played the piano while Lauren sang. He was looking at her in ways that I had dreamed he would look at me. The applause and standing ovation they received told me that they were indeed going to win the talent show this year.

After everyone was done performing the teacher informed the audience that there was one last performer for the evening. I got on the stage with my guitar in hand and sat down at the stool they provided that was located in the center of the stage in front of the microphone.

I introduced myself and told the audience that this song was the story of my life, and then I began to play.

**Solitude (Evanescence)**

**How many times have you told me you love her?  
As many times as I wanted to tell you the truth  
How long have I stood here beside you?  
I lived through you, you looked through me**

Ooo, solitude  
Still with me is only you  
Ooo, solitude  
I can't stay away from you

How many times have I done this to myself?  
How long will it take before I see?  
When will this hole in my heart be mended?  
Who now is left alone but me?

Ooo, solitude  
Forever me and forever you  
Ooo, solitude  
Only you, only true

Everyone leaves me stranded  
Forgotten, abandoned, left behind  
I can't stay here another night  
Your secret admirer, who could it be?

Ooo, can't you see  
All along it was me?  
How can you be so blind  
As to see right through me?

And ooo, solitude  
Still with me is only you  
Ooo, solitude  
I can't stay away from you

Solitude  
Forever me and forever you  
Ooo, solitude  
Only you, only true

After finishing my song I looked into the audience and straight into Edward's eyes. I had tears running down my cheeks and so did he. Still looking into his eyes I whispered into the microphone, "It's always been you." With that I barreled off the stage and never looked back. I had all my things already packed and stuffed into my truck. There was no way that I was going to stay around this town any longer. I couldn't be expected to stay somewhere that I wasn't wanted. I couldn't do it anymore; it was too painful for me to watch him and Lauren live the life that I longed for.

Had I stayed for the end of the show I would have found out that I was the winner of the talent show. There had been a representative from Julliard there and I was also the winner of a scholarship to attend that school. I would have also found out that Edward was and had been secretly in love with me for as long as I was with him. He was just too afraid that I didn't see him that way. Instead I left the school, the town and never looked back.

**2009** – Legally changed my name to Marie Isabella and enrolled and got accepted to Dartmouth.

**2010 **– Doing well in school.

**2011** – Got a good job writing songs, still doing well in school.

**2012** – Set to graduate Dartmouth with High Honors, job is still going well.

It has been four years since I left when I ran into Alice at a grocery store near the Dartmouth campus where I had been attending college for the past four years. I was majoring in music and had a minor in literature, two of the things that I loved. The only thing that I loved more was Edward. He owned my heart when we were in school and still did to this day. There wouldn't be anyone who could hold his place in my heart. He was my everything; and the knowledge that he was living a happy life made me happy, or as happy as one can be with their heart ripped out of their chest. As long as he was happy I could cope with the life I had for myself. It wasn't much. Charlie had his wife to keep him happy and didn't need me anymore so I decided that I wouldn't have any contact with anyone from my old life. That's how I referred to my life back in Forks, my old life. I was about to graduate from college and already had a job as a song writer with SONY that I had been working at for the past two years.

We chatted for a while catching up on lost time. I found out that she was graduating soon with a degree in fashion, no big surprise there. She had met a man named Jasper and they were married last year. She also informed me that Edward had two children with Lauren. A boy named Charles and a girl named Marie. I asked her what brought on those names and she told me that his son was named Charles after my father who died of a heart attack three years ago, and Marie was for me, of course Lauren didn't know about that.

She was surprised when I started crying uncontrollably. I informed her that I didn't know about my father's death, I hadn't spoken to him since I left home. I didn't mention the fact that Edward naming his daughter Marie after me tore my heart into tiny pieces. Why would he do that?

After I calmed down enough she told me something that would define, or destroy the rest of my life. Edward and Lauren were now divorced because he caught her cheating on him with Mike Newton of all people. Edward was now a single father; Lauren didn't want the children to begin with so she signed away all rights to them. Edward's mother and father were helping with the children until he could graduate and make a proper home for them.

She also told me that she thought that Edward was in love with someone else, someone that he had loved since High School; **me**.

What had I done? If I would have just stuck around for a while before leaving things would have been completely different right now. Four years wasted in the self induced solitude that I had put myself in. The great thing about hind sight being 20/20 is that I now know that most of my solitude had been created because of my own issues stemming back to the abandonment of my mother. Then it hit me, Hard. By leaving the way I did I had become my mother. I would have to change that. I didn't want to be anything like her.

Maybe now that I have grown up and seen the light so to speak, things could be different. Maybe, just maybe I could let myself hope to have a life and future with Edward, if he still wanted me.

To be Continued, maybe…

**A/N: Let me know what you guys think. Should I make a sequel to follow this one shot or not? If I get enough Yes's to that question then I will do it. Thanks for reading. Love Ya ~ January.**

**Here is a link so you can listen to the song if you want: **

**.com/watch?v=-Z7p3abL_P0**


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